Popular Woodworking Magazine » October 2010http://www.popularwoodworking.com
Woodworking advice, woodworking plans, woodworking projects and woodworking blogsTue, 03 Mar 2015 21:35:59 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1Online Extras: October 2010 Issuehttp://www.popularwoodworking.com/oct10/online-extras-october-2010-issue
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/oct10/online-extras-october-2010-issue#commentsSat, 12 Feb 2011 19:41:49 +0000http://www.popularwoodworking.com/?p=127911Online Extras for the October 2010 issue include the free SketchUp model for the Factory Cart Coffee Table, a free 3-D model of the buffet cabinet project in SketchUp format, a video of Michael Dunbar using a large and a small bowsaw, video of a visit to the David R. Webb veneer mill, a 3-D Google SketchUp model of the drawer frame for the dining table and more.

I made the decision to murder with a tinge of remorse because I have heard more than a billion times during the last few years that we need trees to help stem global warming. But the beauty of the 75' of dead straight Western red cedar towered over me. I pulled the starter cord of my 24" bar chain saw and I cut the wedge, committed now, adrenaline pumping. I began the hinge cut, slipped in a plastic wedge for safety and murdered the tree. It screeched just before it hit the forest duff, then lay still. I didn’t see a dead body. I saw dollar signs, and my guilt wafted away with the sweet smell of the 50-to-1 gas mixture.

The tree was alive, and didn’t need to die – but I needed cedar lumber for the interior siding of my mountain cabin. Go ahead. Call me a killer. But now I’m a killer with some killer 6' lengths of primo cedar – and now this woodworking project won’t kill my pocketbook. At fi rst, that’s how I saw it – as a way to save some cash. I realized a different motive later.

Spray guns can run off a compressor or a turbine. With turbines the air pressure is established by the number of “stages,” usually two, three or four. Each stage corresponds to about 2 pounds per square inch (PSI). This seems ineffectively low, but it’s made up for by a huge volume of air, giving rise to the name – High-Volume Low-Pressure (HVLP).

With compressors you have an infinite range of pressures you can use, and it is up to you to set this pressure so your spray gun is optimized for the best possible atomization. If you use too little pressure, you won’t get the best atomization; you’ll get orange peel. If you set the pressure too high, you’ll waste fi nish or stain because of excessive bounce-back.

Articles: Browse through the many stories available on our "Finishing" page.To buy: Bob's new book, "Flexner on Finishing" (Popular Woodworking Books), is now available through our online store. The book is an indexed collection of Bob's updated and revised columns from the last 10+years.

On my first day on the job as an apprentice cabinetmaker, my task was to glue together radiator panels for an office building. Two sticks of solid wood with tongues on one edge fit into grooves on the edges of veneered MDF panels. Eager to show that I wasn’t a complete boob, I said, “The glue should squeeze out so I know I have enough, right?”

The cabinetmaker training me looked me up and down and said, “The glue should almost squeeze out.” I thought he was asking for the impossible as I set to work. There were a lot of panels to practice on, and plenty of time to think. Six weeks and 1,300 panels later, I was done. I got pretty good at laying down a bead of glue that just barely squeezed from the joint and every now and then I hit the “almost squeeze out” target.

Most of my motivation to apply the perfect amount of glue came from dealing with the consequences of too much glue – patches that wouldn’t take stain due to wiping off the excess with a wet rag or chips in the veneer from scraping off little beads that I allowed to dry on the surface.

Over the years, I applied this principle to all my joinery. I read magazine articles recommending the use of copious amounts of glue to avoid “starving” the joint. When I worried about that possibility, I would put a joint together then take it apart to see where the glue was. If I saw glue on both surfaces I was happy; the joint would hold and I wouldn’t have a mess to clean up.

My methods were successful. I can’t remember having a joint fail for want of glue. Most of my experience is in production work, where time is money. I wasn’t wasting time brushing glue on every possible surface before assembly and I wasn’t spending time cleaning up after. But was I doing the best work possible?

Many countries have their own woodworking traditions, which are often a combination of mythology and ideology. The Japanese are no exception, and those traditions are part of the foundation of my work.

There is a temple that ancient Japanese carpenters built. Its columns, hewn from trees, are positioned as when each was a standing tree. That is, the south side of the standing tree, when used as a column, also faces the south.

Though the tree’s south side has more knots, period Japanese carpenters believed that, if these trees had faced the sun for 1,000 years, as columns they would stand another 1,000 years if positioned the same.

Japanese woodworkers also try not to use wood upside down, even on small objects. And the heart side of the wood should always face the inside of a carcase or object. As a result, Japanese carpenters do not bookmatch material. Even for table legs, the core side should face the inside.

I follow these traditions as much as possible, especially the ideology used to indicate the two lives of a tree. Today, when making a sculpture or cabinet, I use materials that mostly come from my surroundings. There must be a strong reason to make an exception.

I don’t just hope – I carefully construct a table to exist at least 300 years.

]]>http://www.popularwoodworking.com/projects/magobeis-dining-table-part-2/feed0Veneer is the Future: Part 1http://www.popularwoodworking.com/articleindex/veneer-is-the-future-part-1
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/articleindex/veneer-is-the-future-part-1#commentsMon, 17 Jan 2011 18:58:19 +0000http://www.popularwoodworking.com/?p=31391We make the case that the material used on the finest furniture of the past should be in your future.By Marc Adams
Pages: 38-45

I work with veneers! There I said it – this must be what it feels like to come out of the closet. I cut my teeth as a woodworker when veneering furniture was frowned upon. And often I had to educate my clients on why veneered furniture is as worthy as solid-wood furniture.

Wood veneer is a remarkable material that has been used for centuries. It is cost efficient, easy to work, comes in a variety of colors and textures, can be purchased in sequential order and matched together architecturally, can be used decoratively, is easy to repair and can even increase the value of your work. That’s right – increase the value of your work.

The truth is that the majority of the priceless furniture pieces made during the Renaissance are covered with veneer. In fact, working with veneer goes back centuries before the Renaissance. Egyptians imported cedar, cypress and ebony from Syria and Africa. These logs were cut into veneers to adorn the furniture of the Pharaohs. So the question is, if veneer was so highly regarded throughout antiquity, then why would using it in modern America be so objectionable?

I guess it boils down to two reasons: resources and production. When the first settlers came to this land, trees were abundant and the furniture built by the Colonists was made with simple tools and local materials. Because wood was so readily available and easy to work, it became the standard for how furniture was to be made. Because traditional furniture was handmade with solid wood, it’s perceived as more durable and, probably because it is heavier, far more substantial. For this reason, the mindset is that solid wood means better quality.

In the 1970s when I was the young, innocent and naive chairmaker at Strawbery Banke, a museum in Portsmouth, N.H., 50,000 tourists passed through my shop each summer. It never failed that when I was cutting out a chair seat with a bowsaw some wag would quip loudly, “You need a band saw!”

While these comics guffawed at their own cleverness I was puzzled by the comment’s inanity. I knew I was doing just fi ne and didn’t need a band saw. I did my work quickly and effi ciently with two different sized bowsaws – large and small. The saws did all the work I required. I cut out two chair seats a week and four scrolled hands. If the chair had a crest, I cut that too.

The saws had cost very little, relative to a band saw. When I was done, I hung them on the wall, where they took up no floor space in my cramped shop. I was perfectly happy working this way.

After I had grown up and started demonstrating at woodworking shows, I continued to get the same comment from woodworkers who, carried away with their own wittiness, could not stop themselves from blurting, “You need a band saw!” It was then that I realized everyone thought I should have a band saw because they didn’t know about bowsaws. It was their loss. They missed out on the enjoyment of using a very efficient tool that has been around since the Bronze Age and was used in Europe and America to produce the great 18th-century furniture masterpieces we go to museums to admire.

I designed this buffet cabinet a couple years ago for a weekend seminar on Arts & Crafts joinery. After the class I added a 3-D model to the Popular Woodworking Magazine online SketchUp collection. It was an easy way to provide detailed plans for those in attendance. As time passed, the model rose to the top of the collection, based on popularity.

My goal in designing it was to combine several classic elements from the early 20th century, without building a reproduction of any one piece in particular. I was looking to design a piece with a contemporary feel, but that was grounded in traditional Arts & Crafts period elements. Apparently I swiped the right details from the right sources to make a successful piece.

The wide overhanging top with breadboard ends, the fi nger-jointed drawer and the sculpted handles were all borrowed from the designs of Charles and Henry Greene. The proportions of the door stiles and rails were lifted right from the Gustav Stickley stylebook, and the double-tapered legs are a Harvey Ellis element turned upside down.

Equally important are the overall proportions and the rounded edges that ease the transitions where there is a change of direction or a change in plane. The light color of the soft maple keeps the cabinet from looking too formal or too masculine. Absent are the elements often seen in new pieces based on old designs. Corbels and spindles were banished to the land of overused and misapplied design features.

Seventeenth-century chairs come in many styles: plain turned chairs with woven seats, carved joined chairs in leather or wool, and one particular type of chair that is a little unusual these days - the turned chair with a board (really a panel) for a seat.

These chairs come in both four-legged and three-legged versions, from fairly austere to extremely complex and decorative. They can be made of ash, beech, fruitwoods and yew. Typically they are made with large-scale components, resulting in a massive appearance. The four-legged variety was made in New England during the 17th century, and, although there are many examples of three-legged ones surviving in England, there is no evidence of one being made in New England. I usually use ash for the turned parts, and any hardwood board for the seat panel. Oak is my first choice; I've also used elm or cherry.

I often make the three-legged version; it is challenging and fun to make, and it always gets a lot of attention. The geometry involved is a little more sever than with the four-legged chairs, but not all that different. The distinctive element in these chairs is the joinery at the seat-rail height.

The joinery in three-legged chairs with board seats differs from four-legged chairs with woven seats. On a fiber-seat chair, the seat rails are at staggered heights; thus the tenons do not interfere inside the posts.